Hearsay 2021 International Audio Arts Festival goes virtual this April

Hearsay 2021 is a festival that inspires creative audio around the world

UPDATE: HearSay is going virtual this year under the new name HearSay HomeFires

 HearSay HomeFires is taking place from May 7 – May 14, 2021, online. It is a festival of remembering and unearthing and is completely free to attend. The HearSay HomeFires team said, “In 2021, let’s check back in, reminding and recalling, in our rooms all over the world and in Kilfinane itself, what life is like when we open our ears, what community means to us, and what happens when two communities meet.”

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Hearsay HomeFires are inviting you to listen, to connect, to drop in, to rebuild a sense of place and to renew a belief in life’s possibilities.

There will be a premiere of a documentary film on HearSay17, an exploration of dance and sound, a lecture that is not what it seems, a new podcast, a sonic pub quiz, screen dance, audio baking together, a virtual pub and tea and scones.

There will be ‘live listens’ to the HearSay Audio Prize shortlists with creators joining from Australia, Belgium, Canada, China, Colombia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Egypt, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Kenya, Norway, New Zealand, South Africa, Switzerland, UK, and the USA to present their work before an announcement of winners at the HearSay Prize Award Ceremony on May 14.

All the audio works scheduled alongside the HearSay Prize have a Kilfinane connection. There will be live-streamed presentations of pieces created over the last 25 years by visiting artists, in collaboration with Kilfinane people, created by artists from the surrounding areas, or made in Kilfinane for broadcast elsewhere. There’ll be fragments of installations, reports from previous HearSays, features made for Irish Broadcasters pieces made for HearSay, rebroadcasts, remixes.

For those still under Covid restrictions in Limerick, on the physical streets of Kilfinane, there will also be a hint of summers to come with bunting and installations in public spaces to encounter.

 To register for HearSay HomeFires go HERE 

Hearsay 2021 International Audio Arts Festival goes virtual this April

By I Love Limerick Correspondent Tara Byrne

Hearsay 2021 consists of 13 Awards in total this year with incredible prizes

Limerick’s Hearsay 2021 International Audio Festival will take place April 22 – April 25. This Hearsay is likely to be an online/blended event due to the Covid-19 Pandemic. Entries for the Hearsay Prize were sent in January and the Awards ceremony will take place on April 23.

The HearSay International Audio Arts Festival hosts international award-winning contributors from all disciplines of creative audio; radio features, film sound, sound art, theatre sound, music and audio fiction. Hearsay fosters collaboration & imagination, compelling insights, creative challenges and unique experiences with no name badges. HearSay means passion and free-flowing inspiration rooted in a real sense of community.

For Hearsay 2021 will keep the focus on short-form audio, maintaining the types of work that could be entered, revamping the special award categories, and encouraging the entry of pieces not in the English language.

Hearsay 2021 consists of 13 Awards in total. There are two overall awards- HearSay CREATE Gold Award (Overall winner – for NEW audio work) and HearSay CELEBRATE Gold Award (Overall winner – for EXISTING work). There are two awards for work in a language other than English- the HearSay Create Ganbearla Award and HearSay Celebrate Ganbearla Award. There is also one award to recognise emerging audio makers (Full-Time Student and/or under age of 21), the HearSay Rising Award. Finally, they have eight special category awards- HEARD x 2, FEARLESS x 2, ZEST, PROVOKE, HUMAN, & ART.

Counting down…. to the final deadline of the 2021 HearSay Audio Prize :: 2400hrs Irish Time Thursday 21st January with pieces already received from 5 continents! https://t.co/64JIW2rDXE to find out more and enter your wonderful work! #AllEars pic.twitter.com/35AFmSnaFQ

— HearSayAudioFestival (@HearSayFestival) January 20, 2021

The award winners receive a flight to Ireland from anywhere in the world. Each winner also receives a weeklong residency in the Ballyhoura Mountain Lodges. Prize-winning entries will and have been broadcast on radio stations around the world from ABC in Australia to the BBC and in some of the world’s finest podcasts.  The two overall award winners will also receive PAID commissions to create NEW audio work in collaboration with the HearSay Festival. The commissions will be tailored to the interests and disciplines of the winners in a dialogue with the commissioning editors. Winners also receive a Multi-day Festival Pass to attend the next HearSay International Audio Festival. The 2019 Festival had more than 150 events with attendees from 35 countries and were booked out 3 months in advance.

Hearsay’s mission is to create a home that inspires creative audio around the world. In 2019, that home was once again Kilfinane, Co. Limerick, a mountain village which for the four days and nights of the HearSay International Audio Festival was taken over by the world’s finest audio makers.

Hearsay fosters collaboration & imagination, compelling insights, creative challenges and unique experiences with no name badges.

HearSay became an independent arts organisation in 2017 and was started by a small team of award-winning audio artists from Grey Heron Media. HearSay founder Diarmuid McIntyre said “We felt an inspiring conversation could be had and we wanted to be in the room when it happened – but how? We’d have to create that space ourselves: a shared space for audio creators working in different fields to meet and interact with each other and with audiences, in an exciting atmosphere of innovation, inspiration and collaboration.”

Since 2014, the HearSay Audio Prize has attracted incredible entries from every corner of the globe that have been infused with the adventurous spirit of HearSay. They were, by turns, sonically experimental, exquisitely simple, deliciously intimate, and above all inspirational. HearSay’s winners have been veterans and novices, sound artists, film-makers and documentary makers, students and podcasters. They’ve come from all around the world: Argentina, Israel, United States, Australia, Denmark, Belgium, Ireland, Italy, Canada, Germany, United Kingdom and beyond.

Commenting on the entries for this year’s festival, Hearsay said, “Got to admit to a thrill on getting notifications of entries arriving from all around the world to the HearSay Audio Prize 2021. We’ve entrants now from every continent now bar Antarctica – someone get those audio loving penguins inspired!”

For more information about Hearsay go HERE 

For more stories about Hearsay go HERE